


Getting Smaller and Smaller and Smaller

by spectacularkingeliot



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Possession, violence is against OC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-17 07:51:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17556302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spectacularkingeliot/pseuds/spectacularkingeliot
Summary: Eliot is trapped inside his own mind while the Monster uses his body. Does fighting make it better or worse?





	Getting Smaller and Smaller and Smaller

**Author's Note:**

> I tried something different with the writing style - I hope it works.
> 
> Title is from Getting Smaller by NIN. With Teeth was my writing playlist for this one, and there's a few songs that fit in with this theme on that album.
> 
> Thanks to adjovi for always being the perfect cheerleader.

He doesn’t understand what’s happening until it’s too late. _Nigel_ doesn’t understand. He feels it like a second skin settling over him, to start with, but uneasiness turns to panic when something heavy settles over his chest.

When he realises what’s happening, who he is, what _it_ is, his heart stops, his breath catches in his throat.

Or it would have, if he had control over his body anymore.

He rages against it, trying to free himself. Fights hard and furious, scrambling for freedom, scrambling for _anything_.

He can see what it does, feel what it feels, hear what it says, what it thinks. There’s an endless void of knowledge that needs filling, a burning desire to learn everything that it lost, to discover who it is and _what_ it is. It’s fascinated by humans, by their desires and emotions.

He knows it wants companionship. He knows it wants Quentin. And that it wants to kill everyone else.

At first he feels furious. Then he feels sick. He begs and pleads - he knows the Monster can hear it, can hear his active thoughts and more, when it tries, and he offers it anything - everything he has, everything he knows, he offers to stop fighting if it will just stay away from them.

Magic might be restricted, but the Monster’s isn’t. With a thought, they’re on a cold Brooklyn street.

* * *

 

He doesn't feel relief to see Quentin outside the bookshop. Fear snakes it’s icy fingers around his heart. _Get out get away run run **run**_. Quentin looks happy, flustered, touched, and the Monster is delighted. Eliot wants to vomit. Quentin hurries away with a nervous smile, and Eliot tries to turn his body, tries to _stop_ his body, tries to _do anything_ but the Monster just presses him down, squashing him into a smaller corner of his mind with as much effort as swatting a fly, and it’s the first time that Eliot realises that the space inside him is infinite.

Quentin looks at him with fear in his eyes and he wants to cry, he wants to scream, but at least he _knows_ that he should be afraid _._ Even if he doesn't know that he should be fucking terrified.

God, they had been so fucking _stupid._

Quentin - Brian - fights. He tries to run, he tries to hurt it, and even though Eliot’s body is still vulnerable, the Monster is always aware. It knows that Eliot’s body needs sleep, but it doesn’t lose awareness the same way humans do, so when Quentin tries to sneak off in the dark, it’s on top of him in an instant. The one time Quentin manages to get out of the house that the Monster had commandeered for the night, it just _thinks_ and it’s in Quentin’s path.

It thinks it’s a game. Everything with Ora was a game, so Quentin must be playing too. “But you should tell me if we’re playing hide and seek, not-Brian.”

At least it stops calling it Quentin. The ringing in his ears is bad enough, but the Monster doesn't stop until the vending machine topples and almost crushes Quentin underneath. It's protectiveness over Quentin is… something. Good? He hates himself for even considering any part of this to be good, but at least Quentin isn't getting hurt.

Physically, anyway.

Eliot feels… less. Thinner. Smaller.

His grip is slipping.

* * *

When the waiter at the restaurant that the Monster decides they had to eat at _now right now_ takes too long to deliver their meals, it looks up at him almost curiously, and blood starts trickling from his eyes before they crush in on themselves.

Quentin runs and the Monster lets him. It finds him out the parking lot behind the building, hands on the bitumen, stomach heaving. Eliot wants to reach for him, wants to comfort him, put his hands on him and hold him despite the fact that Quentin doesn't even know Eliot, Brian doesn't know Eliot. At the same time, he wants to leave, to get as far away from Quentin as he can because the further away he is, the less damage he can do.

He fights. He pushes at the edges of his awareness, forcing himself outward, scrambling to get some kind of hold on his own body.

He holds himself back, but the Monster walks him forward anyway. Eliot kicks and screams and tries to gain control, but aside from a short jab back into place, the Monster barely acknowledges him.

Spent, he stops struggling and watches the Monster put his hand on Quentin's shoulder. Watches Quentin lift his head and look up at him in defeat.

Eliot feels defeated too.

He also feels a little bigger. Feels a little more himself.

He keeps his thoughts quiet and hopes it doesn't notice.

* * *

Eliot can feel the blood splatter on his face, taste the coppery tang on his tongue as he licks the ice cream. He's never having pistachio ice cream again.

He's losing hope that he'll ever do anything for himself again.

Days have passed, but he's not sure how many. Quentin looks more tired and resigned every time he looks at him. He's given up fighting, instead putting all of his efforts into lessening the damage the Monster does.

It doesn't work very well.

“These friends… I’m going to kill them, and we have to assume it’s going to happen in front of you.”

The words fall from his lips, and Eliot feels a coldness wash over him as Margo's face swims immediately in front of his eyes. He has no idea where she is but that won't stop the Monster - it didn't stop the Monster finding Quentin. He thinks about Josh, about Penny, about Kady and Julia and even Alice, and the idea of killing any of them makes him feel sick.

The thought of killing Margo, of watching, feeling, _breathing_ himself kill Margo has panic screaming through him.

With the ice cream cold on his lips and melting on his tongue, he feels the Monster consider his thoughts and instinctively shrinks away from it, but it’s too late. It seems to only focus its attention on him when it feels like it, and now it splits it’s focus between sharing its ice cream with Quentin and rummaging through Eliot’s feelings.

He sees its thoughts zero in on Margo, and Eliot desperately tries to make his mind blank but it’s too late. He hears it acknowledge the fact that she means something, she means _more_ , and he feels its decision to start with her. _Or, leave her until last. Which one will hurt the most?_ Eliot’s terror sends wonderful thrills through his body, more trembling tension and adrenaline that it had felt in a long time, and it enjoys the taste of all of the different emotions.

It wonders… out of the corner of his eye it sees two people smiling, happy, laughing as one tucks the other's hair behind their ear in a fond gesture. Eliot feels it notice how smiling makes them look different, balks when he hears it wonder how it would make Quentin look. It reaches out with Eliot’s hand, brushes Quentin's hair back from his face with his fingers.

The wave of _longing_ that swells over his discomfort almost undoes Eliot, because he’s done that a million times over a millions days, and when he feels the Monster’s interest piqued he squashes down those memories of decades together, of love and happiness and home and safe because those memories are _his_. He pulls himself back, shrinking down to be small, unnoticeable, irrelevant.

Quentin looks away with Eliot’s fingers at his temple but doesn’t flinch, his expression  uncomfortable and resigned and not at all what the Monster wanted. It presses Eliot’s lips together in frustration and tries again, raking his fingertips against Quentin’s scalp the way he'd seen Eliot do in his memory. Eliot is disgusted, guilty, betrayed by his own thoughts. His memories had led to that, to something that made Quentin smaller.

Eliot keeps himself small, keeps his thoughts tight, tries not to give the Monster anything that it can use against Quentin.

When he next tries to push back against it, he has less room to move than before.

It's a constant push and pull, and he knows he's losing.

He's not sure he wants to win.

Not if winning gives the Monster power over the people he loves.

* * *

 

He stares down at Margo, her eyes large and dark and searching searching searching. She knows it's him, knows it's Eliot but not Eliot, something else using Eliot and her eyes flicker back and forth between his as she searches for some tiny part of him that's still there. Suddenly he feels the urge to fight again, the will to rail at his prison, to shout and cry and scream _I'm in here Margo please help me god help me please get me out._

He presses out against the edges of his mind, forcing himself bigger, fighting for the barest ounce of control. With no effort at all, the Monster reaches inside his mind and _plucks,_ taking a memory and wrapping itself up in it. It lifts his hand, brushes the backs of his fingers along Margo’s cheek. “It’s okay, Bambi,” it tells her, lilting Eliot’s voice just the way it sounds in the memory it found. “We can be friends too.”

Horror fills Margo’s eyes and Eliot’s heart, and he snaps back down. He draws himself in, making himself smaller, smaller, as small as he can because as much as he wants to riot, wants to rage and fight with everything in him to _get the fuck away from her you fucking psychopath,_ he won’t let it use him against her. He won’t let his memories, his thoughts make Margo weak, or Quentin, or anyone else. He sinks down, deep into himself, until he’s nothing, he’s insignificant, he’s harmless.

He can’t fight anymore.

He can’t hurt them either.


End file.
